In the global debate over neonicotinoid pesticides, the company that makes most of them has relied on one primary argument to defend its product: The evidence that these chemicals, commonly called "neonics," are harmful to bees has been gathered in artificial conditions, force-feeding bees in the laboratory, rather than in the real world of farm fields. That company, Bayer, states on its website that "no adverse effects to bee colonies were ever observed in field studies at field-realistic exposure conditions."
Bayer will have a harder time making that argument after today.
This week, the prestigious journal Science reveals results from the biggest field study ever conducted of bees and neonics.

Health Impact News reporter John Thomas' dire warnings about actions taken to combat the Zika hoax are already coming true.
While there is no credible evidence that mosquitoes can carry Zika, or that Zika presents any public health threat, the evidence is mounting fast that efforts to fight Zika present the greatest threats to our nation's health and well-being.
National mainstream media is widely reporting today that Dorchester County, S.C. aerially sprayed naled, a pesticide used to kill mosquitoes across the county this week, which resulted in the deaths of millions of bees.

What if the very GM agricultural system that Monsanto claims will help to solve the problem of world hunger depends on a chemical that kills the very pollinator upon which approximately 70% of world's food supply now depends?
A new study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology titled, "Effects of field-realistic doses of glyphosate on honeybee appetitive behavior," establishes a link between the world's most popular herbicide – aka Roundup – and the dramatic decline in honeybee populations in North American and Europe that lead to the coining of the term 'colony collapse disorder.'

This year, food security is set to suffer another big setback, and the culprit could not be cuter: honeybees. Last winter, America’s beekeeping industry lost nearly half of all its bee colonies. And the numbers keep falling. Last summer, in the largest bee kill on record, more than 50,000 bumblebees were killed in Oregon as a direct result of exposure to an insecticide applied to trees for cosmetic purposes.
The killing has gotten so bad that people are calling it a beepocalypse. This is a serious situation. One-third of the food produced in North America depends on pollination by our honeybees. Nearly 100 varieties of fruits depend on honeybee pollination, from almonds (which are California’s third-largest export) to avocados to apples to cranberries.
America, then, must act fast if we want to save our bees, our food and our economic productivity.

Big Ag in California needs most of the U.S. bee supply transported to California to pollinate their almond crop, endangering the entire U.S. food system.
80% of the world's almonds come from California's Central Valley. Almonds are the #1 agricultural crop grown in California. It is a $4 billion industry. Big Ag in California needs almost 100% of the nation's bee supply transported to California this year to pollinate their almond crop, endangering the bee supply and the entire U.S. food system. Last year, many bees from northern climates arrived dead, forcing them to try and find bees as far away as Florida. Also, about 30% of the bees that went to California ended up dying according to one supplier.
So the question we need to ask, and certainly one the USDA and FDA should be asking, is: Are we willing to risk our entire bee population on the California almond market?

Instead of getting rid of the pesticides that are killing the bees, the ag industry wants to create a big new market for high-fructose corn syrup. Since 2006, up to 40% of the bee colonies in the US have suffered Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and neonicotinoid pesticides are to blame. Rather than the agriculture industry addressing the pesticide issue, they are now creating factory farmed bee hives, where the bees are fed sugar and high-fructose corn syrup instead of honey (both of which will contain GMOs). Studies of GMO grains on small mammals show that offspring become sterile by the third generation. What if all the bees were to suddenly stop reproducing?

Researchers analyzed pollen from bee hives and found 35 different pesticides along with high fungicide loads. Each sample contained, on average, nine different pesticides and fungicides, although one contained 21 different chemicals. While previously assumed to be safe for bees, bees fed pollen contaminated with high levels of fungicides had a significant decline in the ability to resist infection with the Nosema ceranae parasite, which has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). In the US, the “Save America’s Pollinators Act” has been introduced; if passed, this bill, HR 2692, would require the EPA to pull neonicotinoid pesticides, also implicated in bee die-offs, from the market until their safety is proven.

Local beekeepers are finding millions of their bees dead just after corn was planted here in the last few weeks. Dave Schuit, who has a honey operation in Elmwood, lost 600 hives, a total of 37 million bees.
“Once the corn started to get planted our bees died by the millions,” Schuit said. He and many others, including the European Union, are pointing the finger at a class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids, manufactured by Bayer CropScience Inc. used in planting corn and some other crops.

There is great concern across Europe about the collapse of bee populations. Neonicotinoid chemicals in pesticides are believed to harm bees and the European Commission says they should be restricted to crops not attractive to bees and other pollinators. There have been a number of studies showing that the chemicals, made by Bayer and Syngenta, do have negative impacts on bees.

The term, Colony Collapse Disorder, is fraudulent, designed to direct attention from the known cause. Agribusiness, the poison manufacturers making death-producing pesticides, is the other face of Big Pharma.